Mother reunited with daughter 49 years after she was told she’d died

We recently reported on the power of social media after it reunited an abandoned child with her family, and now a similar story has emerged after a mother and daughter were brought back together after nearly half-century apart with the help of Facebook. 

 

Zella Jackson Price from Missouri was wrongly told her premature daughter had died just hours after birth. However the truth was very different, and her daughter, who was alive and well, had in fact been placed in foster care, going on to be adopted when she was 16-years-old.

 

49 years after she gave birth in a St. Louis hospital, Zella finally met the daughter she thought she had lost. Talking to Fox 2 about the emotional reunion with Melanie Diane Gilmore, Zella said: “There’s nothing greater. There’s nothing greater than this. Nothing. [God] has given me everything the devil has taken from me. I’m getting it back. I’m getting my baby back.”

 

The search began when Melanie’s two daughters decided to search for their grandmother via Facebook. After finding a woman who was, according to Melika Jackson (Melanie’s daughter), “a 99.9997% match” they introduced Melanie and Zella to each other.   

 

And while clearly emotional and delighted about finally being reunited, the journey is not over yet as both women are determined to uncover why they were separated in the first place.

 

A  heartbreaking story, we’ll keep you posted.